


home away from home

by weatheredlaw



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Married Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 11:39:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8889349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: Newt is exquisitely stable, there at her side as soon as she needs him, unmoving and unrelenting in his resolve.Stubborn, perhaps, when he needn’t be – but a gift to her, always.





	

**Author's Note:**

> based on a headcanon post on tumblr about tina and "pumpkin" and KIDS.

_all will be well, as long as you stay by my side_  
_you help me take this weight off my shoulders_  
_always run my way when i call you_

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, Newt reminds Tina of her father. Not all the time, and probably only in the ways any man might remind her, but she thinks that it’s good that it’s Newt who gets to be the one.

Their first is a boy, a sturdy thing with dark hair and Queenie’s dimples, but Newt’s furrowed brow and predisposition for finding himself in troubling situations. Once when August was three they had to remove his head from the fencing surrounding the yard, but only after Newt had had a good laugh about it. The boy had looked sternly at his father and said, “It _isn’t_ funny papa.”

“Oh, but it is, my boy.”

Eventually, August conceded, the way only a three year old can, that it _was_ humorous, and allowed his mother to retrieve him from the fence.

(Tina remembers falling into the mud, and becoming stomping mad about it when her father had pointed and laughed and said that she looked like a chocolate covered strawberry in her red dress and satin ribbons.

She, too, had conceded that she looked like a dessert, and allowed him to clean her up.)

 

* * *

 

Their second is a girl, born a soft blonde with Newt’s wide eyes and Tina’s mouth, always open and making noise, from the moment she could. She learns to ask questions before she’s two, and makes broad declarative statements about the world at large.

“Mama is tall,” Penny says, rather sagely.

“Papa is red,” she says, as if to educate them.

“August is noisy,” she mutters, and tries to fall asleep on her father’s reading chair.

(Later, she will continue this trend, coming home from Hogwarts and collapsing dramatically onto the sitting room sofa and proclaiming loudly, “Home is so _boring_ ,” just before she’s wrangled into feeding the mooncalfs right before dinner.

Tina has no baseline for this – by the time she was a teenager, her father was dead, and she was raising Queenie on her own.

They survive, is the point.)

 

* * *

 

Their third is their last. Another boy, this time with Newt’s ruddy complexion and ruddier hair (Penny had eventually grown into Tina’s darker locks, mourning the last of her blonde baby hair with her first hair cut at four.) – He is also born too early, too soon the healer says, and nearly doesn’t make it.

Tina spends her time in bed, nearly lost herself, as Newt divides his time between a silent vigil by her side, and another outside the window of the small room where they’ve confined their son for his own protection. He murmurs to himself, August says, but cannot be understood.

“Is papa angry?” he asks, tucking himself against his mother’s hip while Penny naps at her feet. “Is he upset with the baby?”

“No,” Tina says. “Your papa is afraid.”

“But papa’s never afraid.” August looks up, confused and almost angry. “Is he?”

“We’re all a little afraid sometimes,” Tina says quietly, drawing him closer again. “It’s only fair to let papa be afraid sometimes, too.”

“Oh.”

Later, August goes to his father at the window, reaching up and taking his hand.

“I’m afraid sometimes, too,” he says, and earns himself a spot in his father’s arms, waving to baby Edmund, making faces through the glass.

 

* * *

 

They outgrow one house after the other, until Newt finally agrees to purchase his grandfather’s property from his brother in Dorset, and they move there. It’s larger than all three of their old cottages combined, but there’s room to keep a few of his mother’s hippogriffs, and a few of his newer collections. It’s also a place where the children can _play_ , and for Tina, that is the most important part of all.

Her father always insisted they play.

Newt does, too, but he is quieter about it, allowing them to conduct their own games and then wrangle him in, convincing him to play the part of the pirate captain, or, in a very odd game, the gravedigger. Tina joins in when she arrives home from the ministry in the afternoon, and when Newt is away, they beg for her to play his parts, or invent new ones in his stead.

“You can be the queen, mama. Look, we’ve made a crown.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you.” A bug crawls out of one of the flowers and down her cheek.

“Don’t squish it, mama. What if it’s a beast?”

“Then we’ll save it for your father.”

“Yes,” Penny says. “Papa will know.”

They say this about Newt with such certainty – Tina is constantly endeared. When he is there, they will go hours without paying him attention, if he is very, very busy. When he is away, they talk constantly about him.

Tina is informed, at some point, that it is the same when she’s gone in the mornings.

“It’s always, _when is mama coming home_ , even though they know your schedule better than I do.” He sets a cup of hot chocolate in front of her one rainy morning and kisses her forehead. “You’re very popular when you’re away.”

“That’s how it was when my father would go,” Tina muses. “Mother would stay with us, and we’d watch him walk to the end of the road and Apparate. Then we’d play all day and wait by the window for almost an hour for him to come back.” She looks up at him. “Did you ever do that?”

“We were encouraged never to wait,” Newt says. “And to always be busy. If my father thought we were idle, he’d give us something to do. There was a lot of mucking of the hippogriff stables when I was a boy.”

“That’s terrible.”

Newt sighs. “Well, an idle hand is a right fit for dark magic, father always said.”

Tina understands, now, where the restlessness comes from.

 

* * *

 

There are also times, though, when Newt reminds Tina of her mother, and she thinks this is a skill unique to him.

There is no one like Newt most days. No one who nurtures quite like he does, and no one who handles their children or his creatures quite as he can. Tina counts herself blessed that she does not have to play the soft mother to the stern father.

(Queenie says they’re both soft, but it’s Tina who has the sharp edges and the stern voice.

Tina wants to tell her that she’s seen her husband grow angry with their children, when they touch something they shouldn’t touch, or say something that should not be said.

Newt’s anger is like a passing cloud. It darkens the day until the sun seems to shine behind it, dissipating the shadow and reminding them that it is only there to be a fitting companion to the light.)

They have dozens of nicknames for their tiny brood – goblin, gnome, pixie, kitten, love, darling, sweetheart, child of mine – all tossed out quick as a cat, to the point where Tina will say something much like, “Come off there darling,” and all three will turn to find her.

On Sundays, they work in the garden, learning to dig out the flobberworms and feed them proper, while sorting them from the regular worms and leaving those where they are.

Newt says to Penny, who is trying to climb over the rabbit fencing they put up to protect the peppers – “Come on, pumpkin, let’s get you inside for a nap.”

And Tina…

Tina stares into the dirt.

_Come on, pumpkin, it’s time for bed._

(There isn’t a part of her that doesn’t remember that day, that entire week, every second of her first moments with him. Just like there isn’t a part of her that doesn’t remember the death potion, and the memories they pulled, and the flash of Credence cowering in that church.

There isn’t a part of her that can truly separate any of it, now, and Tina sees her mother’s face so clearly, and hears her voice so strongly that, for a moment, she is in that memory –

And she is in that room.)

“Mama?” Edmund tugs at her sleeve, smearing dirt all over it. “Mama.”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“Mama, _up._ ” He lifts his arms to her, and Tina nods, picking him up and burying her face against his shoulder.

When she looks out, Newt is standing in the yard, watching her the way he so often does, Penny in his arms, August’s hand in his. He tips his head, and Tina nods, moving to take them all inside.

 

* * *

 

Later, when they’ve bathed the lot, fed them, and put them to bed, Newt comes to stand beside her in the kitchen, reaching into the warm soapy water of the sink and saying quietly, “Did I upset you? In the garden?”

“No, honey.”

“You were crying.”

“It was just…just a memory, Newt.”

He nods, rinsing a plate and then drying it. “Alright. If you insist—”

“Do you remember the death potion?”

Newt pauses, staring into their reflections in the kitchen window. “I could never forget.”

“I sometimes wish I could.”

“And forget something so thrilling?”

Tina snorts. “You didn’t have your memories on display for everyone to see.”

“No,” he says. “Just me.” Newt leans into her. “You and I have seen the very worst of each other, and yet—” He kisses her temple. “Here we are.”

“Here we are,” Tina agrees.

“I don’t think there’s a single part of you that could run me off.”

Tina raises a brow. “We have three kids, Newt. You’re not going _anywhere._ ”

He finally laughs, and she loves when he does. “No, you’re right,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere at all.”

 

* * *

 

This, Tina realizes, is how he is special. How unlike so many others. It isn’t his gifts, or his talents – those certainly distinguish her husband from other wizards, same as her own do for her.

Newt is exquisitely _stable_ , there at her side as soon as she needs him, unmoving and unrelenting in his resolve.

Stubborn, perhaps, when he needn’t be – but a gift to her, always.

She lets him take her hand in the dark of the house and lead her to bed.

Tina says quietly, “I won’t leave you either, you know.”

Newt laughs again. “I know that, darling.”

“Good.” She kisses him firmly and pulls up the sheets. “Good night then, Mr. Scamander.”

He hums. “Good night, Mrs. Scamander. The most pleasant of dreams.”

Tina smiles.

She never wants to look into a pensieve again, for the rest of her life, but she knows – these memories, the ones right now, they’d be there in the bowl, waiting for her to walk through.

And that, she thinks, wouldn’t so bad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @weatheredlaw


End file.
